15.1 Macros supplied with Automake

AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([OPTIONS])

Runs many macros required for proper operation of the generated Makefiles.

AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE is called with a single argument: a
space-separated list of Automake options that should be applied to
every Makefile.am in the tree. The effect is as if
each option were listed in AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS (see Automake options).

By default this macro AC_DEFINE’s PACKAGE and
VERSION. This can be avoided by passing the no-define
option (see List of Automake options):

AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([no-define ...])

AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE can also be called in another, deprecated
form:
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(PACKAGE, VERSION, [NO-DEFINE]). In this form,
there are two required arguments: the package and the version number.
This usage is mostly obsolete because the package and version
can be obtained from Autoconf’s AC_INIT macro. However,
differently from what happens for AC_INIT invocations, this
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE invocation supports shell variables’ expansions
in the PACKAGE and VERSION arguments (which otherwise
defaults, respectively, to the PACKAGE_TARNAME and
PACKAGE_VERSION defined via the AC_INIT invocation;
see AC_INIT);
and this can be still be useful in some selected situations.
Our hope is that future Autoconf versions will improve their support
for package versions defined dynamically at configure runtime; when
(and if) this happens, support for the two-args AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE
invocation will likely be removed from Automake.

Note that if you’re upgrading your configure.ac from an earlier
version of Automake, it is not always correct to simply move the
package and version arguments from AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE directly to
AC_INIT, as in the example above. The first argument to
AC_INIT should be the name of your package (e.g., ‘GNU
Automake’), not the tarball name (e.g., ‘automake’) that you used
to pass to AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE. Autoconf tries to derive a
tarball name from the package name, which should work for most but not
all package names. (If it doesn’t work for yours, you can use the
four-argument form of AC_INIT to provide the tarball name
explicitly).

AM_PATH_LISPDIR

Searches for the program emacs, and, if found, sets the
output variable lispdir to the full path to Emacs’ site-lisp
directory.

Note that this test assumes the emacs found to be a version
that supports Emacs Lisp (such as GNU Emacs or XEmacs). Other
emacsen can cause this test to hang (some, like old versions of
MicroEmacs, start up in interactive mode, requiring C-x C-c to
exit, which is hardly obvious for a non-emacs user). In most cases,
however, you should be able to use C-c to kill the test. In
order to avoid problems, you can set EMACS to “no” in the
environment, or use the --with-lispdir option to
configure to explicitly set the correct path (if you’re sure
you have an emacs that supports Emacs Lisp).

AM_PROG_AR([act-if-fail])

You must use this macro when you use the archiver in your project, if
you want support for unusual archivers such as Microsoft lib.
The content of the optional argument is executed if the archiver
interface is not recognized; the default action is to abort configure
with an error message.

AM_PROG_AS

Use this macro when you have assembly code in your project. This will
choose the assembler for you (by default the C compiler) and set
CCAS, and will also set CCASFLAGS if required.

AM_PROG_CC_C_O

This is an obsolescent macro that checks that the C compiler supports
the -c and -o options together. Note that, since
Automake 1.14, the AC_PROG_CC is rewritten to implement such
checks itself, and thus the explicit use of AM_PROG_CC_C_O
should no longer be required.

AM_PROG_LEX

Like AC_PROG_LEX (see Particular Programs),
but uses the
missing script on systems that do not have lex.
HP-UX 10 is one such system.

AM_PROG_GCJ

This macro finds the gcj program or causes an error. It sets
GCJ and GCJFLAGS. gcj is the Java front-end to the
GNU Compiler Collection.

AM_PROG_UPC([compiler-search-list])

Find a compiler for Unified Parallel C and define the UPC
variable. The default compiler-search-list is ‘upcc upc’.
This macro will abort configure if no Unified Parallel C
compiler is found.

AM_MISSING_PROG(name, program)

Find a maintainer tool program and define the name
environment variable with its location. If program is not
detected, then name will instead invoke the missing
script, in order to give useful advice to the user about the missing
maintainer tool. See maintainer-mode for more information on when
the missing script is appropriate.

Add support for the Dmalloc package. If
the user runs configure with --with-dmalloc, then
define WITH_DMALLOC and add -ldmalloc to LIBS.

You should not use the next macro in new code,
as it will be removed in some future Automake
version, so you should consider updating your configure.ac
to avoid problems in the future.

AM_PROG_MKDIR_P

From Automake 1.8 to 1.9.6 this macro used to define the output
variable mkdir_p to one of mkdir -p, install-sh
-d, or mkinstalldirs.

Nowadays Autoconf provides a similar functionality with
AC_PROG_MKDIR_P (see Particular Programs),
however this defines
the output variable MKDIR_P instead. In case you are still
using the AM_PROG_MKDIR_P macro in your configure.ac,
or its provided variable $(mkdir_p) in your Makefile.am,
you are advised to switch ASAP to the more modern Autoconf-provided
interface instead; both the macro and the variable might be removed
in a future major Automake release.